Maybe we need a primer on the nature of evil. I think evil and hate are the absence of something; in themselves they are nothing. Evil is the absence of good and hate is the absence of love. And it is much easier to be evil and hate than it is to love and be good, which are hard and require self control, self discipline and self sacrifice (they call it the straight and narrow). There are those who are evil by failing to be kind and considerate and take care of others but are willing to step on others in the the pursuit of whatever agenda they have—willing to lie, cheat, steal, harm, kill to get what they want. But then there is another level of evil not as common which is sadism, in which people literally revel in the pain, suffering, rape, injury, death they can inflict on others in some power trip, from serial killing or raping, to Hannibal’s cannibalism, to Hitler’s master race genocide. That is the hard core evil squared.
But usually, and Mags is a case in point, Elmore’s characters are more lifelike and complex than to say he or she is all out evil or all out good. Mags did treat Loretta well, showing her care and womanly things like nice hair, hairpins and clothes, and talked softly and nicely to her, and maybe that is Elmore and the other writers’ way of saying we all can be good or evil from time to time, even Mags. Of course, the elephant in the room there was the incongruity of Mags apparently thinking she could treat Loretta like a daughter and it would never blow up in her face after she had killed Loretta’s dad. That narcissism is reflective of Mags’ psychopathology, though. It really was preposterous that she would actually think she could have a good and long-term relationship with Loretta and try to mother a girl whose dad she killed. And predictably, when Loretta got the goods, she was gone.
And I think Mags is a little more ambivalent about the boys than you might think, mk, and is not just treating them like a man-hater might. She and the boys have a strange backwoods, uncivilized, symbiotic kin relationship, in which the boys truly rely on her for direction and love and approval, and she relies on them, in their intellectual and emotional lack of development, to carry out her directions to keep the family business thriving and she thinks they need an iron hand to stay the course, though her hammering Coover’s hand did smack of the sadistic more than familial love and discipline. And it was Coover’s dismay at mom apparently liking Loretta while rejecting him, because he valued her love and approval so much, that sent Coover over the edge more than anything. Mags made it clear this week that Raylan killed her baby, suggesting there will be hell to pay, so she is feeling the pain of the loss of both Loretta and Coover, just moments after being on top of the world and moved to song on the porch after beating the coal company out of a mountain of cash. Maybe virtue is its own reward and evil is its own damnation.
